In the early weeks of summer 2019, as she prepared to pick up her Penn PhD diploma, move into a New York apartment, and take up her new job as an Assistant Professor at Columbia University School of Public Health, Ambar La Forgia looked back at the SUMR program that was instrumental in making this all happen.

"I was one of those students whose career trajectory was changed by the SUMR program. It changed my life," said La Forgia, who went through the program ten years ago in 2009. 

Daughter of the then-Lead Health Specialist at the World Bank, she was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in the U.S. and Brazil. "I had a lot of exposure to health care and issues of access for vulnerable populations because of my father's work," she said, "but I didn't really get interested in it as a career until I took an undergrad Health Economics class at Swarthmore."

A Swarthmore College classmate who had been through SUMR told her about the program and urged her to apply. She did and, as a Swarthmore sophomore, became a SUMR Scholar.

"When I started SUMR, I didn't know what academic research meant or what a PhD could mean toward becoming a professor," she said. "It was all brand new to me. I remember the first week of orientation was full of these intensive courses; it was my first exposure to specialized health care classes and I said 'yes, this is what I want to do'."

La Forgia graduated Swarthmore with honors in Economics and Mathematics in 2011,  spent a year as a Policy Analyst at Ernst and Young in Washington, and then came back to Penn as a PhD student in the Wharton School's Health Care Management Department.

She was so enthusiastic about her SUMR experience that she spent four years on the committee that vets the more than 300 SUMR applications that arrive at LDI each year.

"It was great to continue with SUMR even after I finished the program," she said. "Because it happened to me, I knew it really can change a student's life, especially those from schools that have no health care-related classes. They have no way of learning about health care research and this can be such a jumping off point for them."

"Even today," she said, "my suggestion to undergrads who think they're interested in health care -- especially when it comes to vulnerable populations or issues of diversity in health -- is that SUMR is a 'must do' program."